


Meaning of the Hearts

by Muccamukk



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, Card Games, Drunken Flirting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fortune Telling, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, pavuvu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23346322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: A late night on Pavuvu with a bottle of whiskey and a deck of cards.
Relationships: Andrew A. "Ack-Ack" Haldane/Edward "Hillbilly" Jones
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31
Collections: Heavy Artillery: The Pacific Tenth Anniversary Comment Fest, Loose Lips Sink Ships Prompt Meme





	Meaning of the Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Heavy Artillery's The Pacific [10th Anniversary Comment Fest](https://heavyartillery.dreamwidth.org/41986.html) prompt: Andy/Eddie "Cards." And, while I'm at it, for the LLSS prompt: "It's the quiet moments like these that keep them going."
> 
> Title and card meanings taken from the excellent and hilarious Fortune-Telling by Cards by Professor P. R. S. Foli ( _Author of "Fortune Teller" "Dream Book" etc_ ), which may be found on Archive.org. Planetary reading is from Sacred Circle Tarot. And, yes, I actually did it.

"I'm too drunk for this," Andy complained, staring at his hand in dismay. He'd just discarded the jack of diamonds, which on any better day he'd have known that Eddie wanted.

"Seems like you are." Eddie picked up the jack, and went out. They were only playing for points, but Eddie had Andy well and truly smoked after two hands. He leaned back and watched Andy attempt to tally up the catastrophe of a hand, trying not to smile at the way Andy was looking at his cards like they'd personally betrayed him.

Both the whiskey and the lamp light softened Eddie's impression of the night, bathing the whole thing in a warm, affectionate glow. A little drunk, it was easy to ignore the smell of rotting coconuts and the scuttle of rats, and just see Andy sitting cross legged on one end of his bunk, stripped to his shorts. It was easy to imagine the little oasis they shared inside the mosquito netting was the whole world, and that the island of Pavuvu just plain didn't exist.

Eddie took another pull from the bottle and held it out to Andy.

"I'm in the hole," Andy grumbled. He tossed his cards to the bunk before taking the bottle and knocking back a long swallow of whiskey. Eddie watched his throat bob, and smiled fuzzily back at Andy when he corked the whiskey and set it aside.

Truth was, the last hand had been more luck and Andy's terrible playing than any attention on Eddie's part. It was difficult to pay attention to much of anything with Andy Haldane nearly naked and within arm's reach.

"Let's play something else," Andy said, gathering up the cards.

Eddie watched his long fingers square them into a neat brick and then divide them to shuffle anew, before muzzily lifting his attention back to Andy's face. He was frowning again, and Eddie wanted to lean forward and kiss the lines away, only they couldn't, not here. The island was ten miles long, and not one inch of that had a lick of privacy.

"Sore you're losing?" Eddie prodded, and Andy glanced up from the cards, half smiling.

"Maybe I am," Andy agreed, "Never liked the feeling."

Eddie snorted, amused that someone who naturally excelled at everything he put his hand to would be put out by a game of gin, and charmed that Andy was so ready to admit it.

"What shall we play?" Eddie asked. "Poker?"

"Don't have any stakes." Andy's eyes flicked over Eddie's bare chest, and Eddie could tell the idea of stripe poker crossed Andy's mind in the same moment it did his own. "Might be dangerous."

"Reckon it might," Eddie agreed with a sigh. He hadn't gotten his hands on Andy since Melbourne, and didn't want to think about how long ago that'd been. He took another drink. "Be a short game, anyhow."

Andy smiled at him, but waved off the bottle. "Tell you what, Hillbilly, how about I tell your fortune?"

Eddie laughed. Seemed like Andy could always tell when he was fretting and get a laugh out of him one way or another. "Know how to read the future now, do you?"

Andy riffled the cards with his thumb for punctuation as he said. "It's an ancient secret taught only to the most dedicated inner circles of the honourable martial order of Sigma Nu."

"Somehow always had a different picture of what went on in those fancy college fraternities," Eddie commented but he smoothed out the blanket so Andy could lay the cards out.

Andy flashed a grin, and put the deck down between them, sides square to the angle of the bunk. "First thing is, you've got to think of a question, and then hold it in your mind while you shuffle the deck with your left hand."

"All of a bit of a fuss, ain't it?" Eddie asked, but he didn't want to break Andy's light-hearted mood.

"Think of a question," Andy insisted, and for a moment their eyes met, and the _only_ question flashed between them. There was no asking that, not even in jest.

"Okay, okay." Eddie picked up the cards, cutting them left handed. He tried to think of something he gave a single shit about that wasn't that question, and drew a blank. An image of his sisters pulling the petals off of daisies drifted in, and Eddie thought, _Loves me? Loves me not?_ as he kept cutting the cards. "When should I stop?"

"You will feel the cards speak to you," Andy assured him, and took another swig of whiskey.

Eddie cut the cards a few more times, not feeling especially spoken to. The whole thing felt silly, really, so he cut the cards one last time and squared up the edges before holding his hands up in a gesture of finality. "There you are, Ack Ack."

Andy picked up the deck and cut it three more times, stacking the sections in a complicated way that Eddie was too drunk to follow. Andy moved with the assurance of a man who'd done this many times before, and again Eddie had to wonder about the secrets of Sigma Nu.

"There're a lot of different ways to draw the cards," Andy explained, as he laid seven out in a circle, "Depending on the seeker's question, and how much time you have, but the deepest wisdom is found questioning under the auspices of the planets."

"Under the what?" Once Eddie started to laugh, he had a hard time stopping. Part of it was the whiskey, or whatever was in that bottle claiming to be whiskey, but mostly it was the image of Andy in nothing but his shorts, seriously laying fortune cards out on the bunk between them, explaining some kind of cartomancy mumbo jumbo he'd picked up in university, of all places. Eddie wrapped one arm around his ribs, and pressed his other hand over his mouth, but couldn't contain the mirth that doubled him over.

Andy kept batting his shoulder, trying to get him to shut up, but the fact that he was chuckling too wasn't helping at all. "Hillbilly, stop, for Christ's sake," Andy gasped out, and Eddie finally managed to pull himself together. "I got all this bunk rattling around in my head, so you're going to listen to it, all right?"

"Jesus, all right." Eddie wiped the tears from his eyes and tried not to think about how Andy's hand was still resting on his shoulder. It was too hot inside the mosquito netting, and not really any less hot outside of it, even with the tent flaps rolled up in hope of some hint of a breeze. "I'm all ears, Skip."

Andy's hand turned, and as it slipped off Eddie's shoulder, his palm dragged across Eddie's jaw and fell away. Heat pooled in Eddie's gut, but he made himself look at the circle of cards between them.

"Hold on," Eddie said, "I thought there was nine planets, but you've only put seven cards."

"The ancients didn't know about the outer three," Andy said airily, dismissing Eddie's question with a wave, and before Eddie could ask how nine less three led to seven, Andy pointed at the card nearest to Eddie and said, "This one is the moon, that's for how things are at home. Looks to me like everything's all right there: queen of clubs is a powerful, passionate woman with a head for money. Probably your ma."

Eddie had to admit he was mildly impressed. Or would have been if he hadn't seen Andy bullshit his way past the MPs every time they'd come in late off a pass. The man could talk the collar off a priest. He narrowed his eyes in suspicion when Andy tried to explain that the eight of hearts reversed on Mercury meant that Eddie probably spent too much on alcohol.

"Mmhmm," Eddie agreed, and took another pull from the bottle, which, as a matter of record, _Andy_ had bought via Gunny Haney's blackmarket connections.

"This one's your love life," Andy said, riding right over Eddie's scepticism, and Eddie leaned forward, interested despite himself. "Ah." Andy said, and turned the card around, then back again. "Eight of spades reversed, well."

"Dire warning?" Eddie asked.

"Actually, yes," Andy said, a little chagrined.

Eddie considered two red blooded young men sitting nearly naked on a bed, utterly in love, and not able to touch, and sighed. "Sounds like that's about the sum of it."

He frowned when Andy passed over the seven of spades on the sun's position, saying he didn't really remember what it meant. He knew Andy was lying, but didn't want to drag down what'd been meant as a game. "Mars is for war," Andy carried on, and it seemed to Eddie that he'd started taking this more seriously than he ought to be. "This means caution, taking care, not trusting what you hear."

Eddie shivered, goosebumps rising despite the heat. What, he wondered, did that passed over card mean? "You know I'm always careful," he promised Andy, like you could promise anything in war.

"Pretty sure this one means you'll be rich," Andy said, brightening as he pointed to the six of clubs.

"Well, that'll be nice," Eddie agreed, letting the moment pass. It was just a game after all. Even after all those years at sea, Eddie had never taken on the superstitions of a sailor. If anything, it'd made him less prone to the prayers to fortune that half the kids seem to have worked up. "Could use a little spending money."

"Not sure what you'd spend it on, out here," Andy said almost absently. "So this last one is for your obstacles, right?"

"Another seven," Eddie noted. "Shoulda been playing poker after all." It actually looked like the remnants of his last gin rummy hand. Andy hadn't shuffled very well, it seemed, and Eddie had just cut the deck.

"Anything to make me take my shorts off, huh?" Andy asked, but he was frowning again. "Rivalry, or a jealous person," he said. "I think. Eights and sevens," he added, then sighed and swept the hand up, slapping it back on top of the deck before he shuffled it into oblivion. "Doesn't seem like fortune was with you tonight, Eddie."

Eddie snorted, and was about to ask if it ever was, but he looked up and saw Andy again and felt his heart lift like it every time he looked up and remembered that after every awful thing that had happened, and probably would, that Andy still loved him. No need to pull the petals off a flower to tell Eddie that.

He took a risk and reached out to lay his hand on Andy's bare knee. Andy started and then smiled at Eddie in a way that lit up his whole face. "I don't know, Andy," Eddie said, "Strikes me I'm pretty lucky."


End file.
